Narrative Psychology

Narrative psychology describes the way in which narratives and stories are used to describe, understand, explain and change life. It is about giving meaning or finding meaning for the individual, in relationships, groups and larger contexts. Narrative psychology is a methodological approach to psychology that relates to narrative theory and draws on the humanities roots of psychology.

The Narrative therapy uses the findings and methods of narrative psychology to help the client to understand by telling their story their lives better, and to change by telling a new and different story about his own life. In narrative therapy with couples, the partners learn to understand each other's story and to invent a couple story together.

Theoretical framework

Narrative psychology assumes that people give their lives meaning and meaning by reproducing experiences in the form of stories and narratives. Individual life events are not viewed as connected with one another - for example, by themselves: connections and plausibility are rather created by the subject in the process of narration . The starting point for a narrative is neither the facts nor the belief that it really was, but the current presence of the narrating subject in space and time .

Then narratives are not the result of a past of whatever kind , but rather the attempt of the narrator to formulate a coherent story - for the listener and for himself - from the perspective of the here and now . The story is told in three forms of time: the respective event comes from the past, it is linked to current conditions of the present and viewed in anticipation of the future . A particular interest within narrative psychology is the narratives of a person about himself, i.e. his construction of the self and his own identity .

Formation

Narrative psychology developed from criticism of classical psychology in the early 1980s . Similar to the turn from behaviorism to cognitivism , criticism of the one-dimensionality and limitation of psychological approaches played a major role. In essence, one accused classical, mostly scientifically shaped psychology of dealing with the cognitive performance of humans, but not with the much more important construction of meaning and meaning.

Approaches in narrative psychology differ from the field of narratology . Narratologists generally rely on linguistic structuralism in their work , while narrative psychologists are guided by postmodern or poststructuralist approaches.

Narrative psychology can thus be understood as a reaction of psychology to the linguistic turn in the social sciences or to the emergence of postmodern theories in philosophy . The developments in post-structuralism and the associated criticism of classical epistemology played a decisive role here. Instead of believing that it is possible for science, regardless of the subjective beliefs and attitudes of the researcher, to arrive at statements that come ever closer to the truth, regardless of the subjective beliefs and attitudes of the researchers, the postmodern theory assumes that every understanding represents a construction of our mind which is subject to constant changes due to external influences.

Many scholars do not necessarily understand narrative psychology as a new creation, but rather as the resumption of approaches that have been pushed into the background by turning to scientific approaches. In fact, the interest in stories associated with narrative approaches, i.e. in how people tell their lives and thereby create subjective constructions of meaning, is not new. One of the most famous examples of dealing with stories in psychology are arguably Sigmund Freud's case studies. Even Gordon Allport in the 1960s and Henry Murray in the 1930s already individual CVs dealing with narratives.

Triggered by postmodern doubts about the ability of positivist science to solve social problems, developments in various areas of psychology can be shown, which ultimately lead to the development of a psychology that focuses on narratives. For example, in the field of psychoanalytic theory with the work of Roy Schafers , in personality psychology connected with the name of Dan McAdams , in cognitive psychology and the work of Jerome Bruner , as well as in philosophical fundamental reflection dominated by the work on social constructionism by Kenneth Gergen . The beginning of this movement is often associated with the publication of a collection of essays, edited and introduced by Theodore Sarbin , entitled Narrative Psychology - The Storied Nature of Human Conduct . For the first time, psychologists from completely different fields of work were brought together there in order to examine their respective specifications from a narrative point of view.

development

The field of narrative psychology has developed and expanded enormously in the years since Sarbin's collection of essays was published. Nevertheless, it can be said that the vast majority of scholars who feel they belong to the narrative perspective agree on the constructivist view that narration is the primary structuring scheme through which people define their identity and their relationship to the environment and fill them with meaning and meaning .

People who have suffered a critical life event or trauma in their course of life are often impaired in their experience of identity as a result; likewise people with severe age-related losses. With a guided life review or life review therapy , the person can achieve a coherent narrative of their life story and consolidate their identity (see Maercker & Forstmeier).

Self-awareness

The influence of narratives on the self-perception of recipients was examined in two psychological experiments. Assimilation effects (e.g. changes in self-perception in accordance with the characteristics of a protagonist) and contrast effects (e.g. changes in self-perception contrary to the characteristics of a protagonist) were considered. In each case, both the critical examination of the story, recorded by the degree of counter-arguments, and the extent of transportation ( transportation theory ) were measured.

In the first experiment, the implicit and explicit conscientiousness of the subjects was recorded after they had read a story about a diligent or a negligent student. A moderator analysis showed that people with high transportation scores and test subjects who were less critical of the story tended to perceive the portrayed characteristics of the protagonist as their own. In contrast, subjects with lower transportation scores and a more critical attitude towards the story exhibited contrast effects. In the second experiment, the strength of the transportation and the amount of counter-arguments generated were manipulated. No influence on the self-assessed conscientiousness of the test persons could be found here. A meta-analysis, in which the results of both experiments were included, showed overall significant positive correlations between the degree of transportation and counter-arguments on the one hand and history-consistent, self-reported conscientiousness on the other.

literature

• Gordon Allport : Letters from Jenny. New York, 1965.
• Jens Brockmeier, Donal Carbaugh (Eds.): Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture . John Benjamin, Amsterdam a. Philadelphia 2001.
• Jerome Bruner : Acts of Meaning. University of Harvard Press, Cambridge 1990.
• Jacques Derrida : Grammatology. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1974.
• Mark Freeman: Rewriting the self: History, Memory, Narrative. Routledge, London 1993.
• Kenneth Gergen : Constructed Realities. An introduction to social constructionism. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2002.
• Wolfgang Kraus: Narrative Psychology. In: S. Grubitzsch, K. Weber (Ed.), Basic Psychological Concepts. A manual . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1998.
• Andreas Maercker , Simon Forstmeier (Hrsg.): The life review in therapy and counseling. Springer, Berlin 2013.
• Henry Murray: Explorations in Personality. A Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age. New York 1938.
• Donald Polkinghorne: Explorations of Narrative Identity. In: Psychological Inquiry 7 (1996) pp. 363-367.
• Paul Ricœur : Time and Narration. Volume I-III, Fink, Munich 1988.
• Theodore Sarbin (Ed.): Narrative Psychology. The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. New York 1986.
• Roy Schafer: The Analytic Attitude. New York 1983.
• Jürgen Straub (Ed.): Narrative, Identity and Historical Consciousness. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Stefan Krause, Markus Appel: Stories and the Self . In: Journal of Media Psychology . March 8, 2019, ISSN  1864-1105 , p. 1–12 , doi : 10.1027 / 1864-1105 / a000255 ( hogrefe.com [accessed February 9, 2020]).